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HON. JOHN W: CHANLER, 

'I 

OP NEW YORK, 



PROPOSITION TO AMEND THE ENROLLMENT ACT, 



CKLIVEBSD 



IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, ON WEDNESDAY AND 
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22 AND 23, 1866. 




WASHINGTON, D. C. : 

MoGILL & WITIIEKOW, PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS. 

18G5. 






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SPEECH. 



Feb. 22, 1865. 

The House had under consideration House bill No. 
678, to amend the act entitled " An act further to regulate 
and provide for the enrolling and calling out the national 
f rces, and for other purposes," approved July 4, 1864, and 
the other acts relating to enrollment and draft. 

Mr. SCHENCK. The time for the considera- 
tion of this bill is now necessarily limited by 
the approach of the close of the session ; and 
yet so great is the desire of the committee 
which I represent, and my own desire, that this 
bill shall have a proper consideration, with the 
opportunity to amend and modify it in the 
various features it presents to the House, that 
I will make a proposition to the House which 
will perhaps tend to accomplish that object, 
and satisfy gentlemen all around. If I can- 
not be gratified in this, I shall be compelled to 
attempt to carry the bill through, under the 
stringent rules of the House, by the use of the 
previous question, which I by no means desire 
to resort to. 

I propose to ask the unanimous consent of 
the House that this bill shall be considered by 
the House as in Committee of the Whole on 
the state of the Union, with the privilege of 
ten minutes' debate upon the various clauses 
of the bill ; that the bill be taken up and read 
as an entire bill — and it is not long — with the 
amendments now incorporated in it as reported 
from the Committee on Military Affairs, and 
discuss it clause by clause. 

Mr. CHANLER. I must object to any 
such arrangement. 

Mr. HOLMAN. I hope there will be no 
objection. 

Mr. CHANLER. By request of my friends 
I withdraw my objection. 

There being no further objection, the prop- 
osition of Mr. ScHENCK was agreed to. 

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to op- 
pose tlie amendment of the gentleman from 
Wisconsin, [Mr. Sloan.] I do so because I 
am opposed to amending the section at all. I 
believe that it will, if adopted, operate very 
injuriously. I think that any further and more 



stringent legislation with respect to enrollment 
is unnecessary, and will render the law very 
unpopular. I have never heard of any dif- 
ficulty in regard to enrollments. The dif- 
culty, as I have understood, is that after men 
are enrolled they escape. It is not that they 
are not enrolled. 

In my view no change of the law on this 
subject is necessary. The law which we now 
have is sufficiently stringent. If the people 
are allowed to go on as they are doing they 
will fill up the Army as fast as required. If 
this section be enacted it will, I believe, be 
very odious. A subsequent section, the third 
or the fourth, is, in my judgment, still worse. 
The whole bill is more tyrannical than any 
military system ever adopted by Austria ; and 
I trust, therefore, that it will be rejected. 

Mr. CHANLER. Mr. Speaker, I move to 
amend the amendment by inserting before the 
word " avoid," the word " willfully." 

I agree with the gentleman from Pennsylva- 
nia [Mr. Stevens] in regard to the character 
of this bill. It was my intention to urge upon 
the House the very point which he has sug- 
gested, and for that purpose I had prepared 
what I deemed a suitable argument on the sub- 
ject. But when, on the motion of the chair- 
man of the Committee on Military Affairs, de- 
bate was restricted to ten minutes, that of 
course precluded the possibility of my arguing 
the question as I desired. I do not believe 
that, under this limitation of debate, the real 
character of this bill can be adequately ex- 
posed. It is a bill whose provisions touch most 
nearly the social and military relations of ev- 
ery citizen in the United States. This very 
amendment brings that fact to the attention of 
the House. You cannot consider the subject 
of willful avoidance of the provisions of such 
a bill as this without entering into all the ques- 
tions which arise under the power given to the 
Government officials to execute such a law. 
It is utterly impossible that the rights and lib- 
erties of the citizen can be secured to him so 
long as he is held amenable, by laws such as 



this, to an authority outside of the civil courts, 
80 long as he is subjected to the arbitrary 
power of tribunals established for the purpose 
of carrying out a system utterly hostile to 
the institutions of this country — military tribu- 
nals, before which the rights of no man are 
safe. 

I believe that the pending section should be 
stricken out. I believe that the whole bill is 
radically and irreparably wrong. 1 believe it 
to be the duty of the Committee on Military 
Affairs to report a bill frae from provisions ol 
this despotic character, and embracing two or 
three simple provisions for securing a correct 
enrollment and preventing desertion. They are 
now undertaking, by this bill, to establish a 
system which cannot but end in the destruction 
of all order in the Army, and eventually bring 
about popular outbreaks and insurrections. I 
believe that it wi'l weaken the national arms 
and tend to deplete the national treasury ; that 
it will be ineffectual in regard to the object 
proposed, as well as highly expensive to the 
local governments. I believe it to be a bill 
utterly hostile to every principle of a free rep- 
resentative government. I believe that it can 
be proven to be so. I believe that the results 
thus far prove it. I believe it to be a bill that 
the i-ecords of every provost marshal will show 
has filled our quotas on paper and has not sent 
fit men to the Army. The lunatic asylum 
and the jail have been robbed to fill those 
quotas. 

It is a well-known fact that from this system 
have arisen the very evils that this bill attempts 
to remedy, substitute brokerage, bounty swind- 
ling, and bounty jumping. A new guild has 
been created by the system of enrollment and 
fastened perpetually upon the people of this 
country. 

Sir, this bill and the nature of this bill have 
become ingrafted upon the military system of 
the United States. And in order to meet this 
measure as it deserves, the whole question 
should include an examination — and the whole 
matter reqr.i.:is that examination and scrutiny 
— into its effect upon the military organization 
of the United States. I am convinced that it 
will be found to have been injurious in every 
military department. I believe that it will be 
found on examination to have done more to cut 
off the sympathy between the Government and 
people of the United States than any other 
measure which has passed this Congress since 
the rebellion. 

With regard to this special amendment, I 
have to say that it will add another feature to 
the already innumerable contortions of justice 
■which have been fastened upon the tribunals 
of the country by the enrollment acts already 
passed. For the purpose of correcting a spe- 
cial evil acknowledged in the body of the bill, 
even the right of trial by jury is done away 
with, and the people are forced to submit to a I 



military tribunal for the adjustment of private 
rights. You cannot by any system, by any 
fiir opinion of the law of the country, insist on 
this law. Do as ypu may, the sympathies of 
the people are agdhist it. The spirit of your 
institutions is against it. 

[Here the hammer fell.] 

Mr. SCHENCK. Mr. Speaker, the amend- 
ment proposed by the gentleman from New 
York [Mr. Chanler] is argued, as I supposed 
it would be, not on the merit of the particular 
amendment, but on the ground of hostility to 
the whole section. He is opposed not only to 
the first section, but to the whole bill ; and not 
only to the whole bill, but to any system which 
provides for bring'ug soldiers into the field. 
I am not, like my colleague on the committee 
from Illinois, [Mr. Farnsworte,] disposed to 
stop debate at the very cutset, for I think this 
debat?, in some respects, is wholesome. I 
think at the threshold of discussion on the sub- 
ject this House should indicate its purpose to 
sustain or not the Military Committee in an 
attempt to make a law to procure men by in- 
creasing the stringency of the power of en- 
rollment. 

I was prepared to expect opposition to this 
section of the bill, and to the whole bill, and to 
the whole system, and I was prepared to expect 
it from the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. 
Stevens,] who last addressed the House, and 
from the gentleman from New York, [Mr. 
Chanler.] I heard each of the speeches made 
by these gentlemen last session, when .this 
measure was before the House. The tyranni- 
cal course pursued in the draft was then ar- 
gued at full length by the gentleman from New 
York, and the bill was then characterized as 
worse than anything ever done in Austria. I 
remember the figure. I recollect more than 
that. I recollect that the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] predicted that if 
we passed a law repealing the commutation 
clause, and providing, as we did ultimately, for 
enforcing the draft with a little more stringen- 
cy to procure men to fill the depleted ranks of 
our army, it would result in resistance and 
bloodshed. I was then, as now, assured that 
the gentleman was not likely to prove a true 
prophet, and what was not a true prophecy 
then has not become history since. I said 
then that I had no fear of the people, and I re- 
peat it. I said then, so far from producing riot, 
confusion, and disorder, that when the peo- 
ple came to understand what their Represent- 
atives had done in their endeavor to fill up the 
thinned ranks of the army, they would sustain 
them. And I ask every gentleman to bear me 
out in the assertion that never did a draft go 
on more quietly, and never were the ranks of 
the army, to the extent that the draft could do 
it, so filled up as they were, saving the cam- 
paign of last year, under that very bill so de- 
nounced by the gentleman from New York, 



[Mr. Chanler,] and the gentleman from Penn- 
sylvania, [Mr. Stevens ] I say now, at the 
very threshold of this ci nsideration of this sub- 
ject, that my thorough conviction is, so far as 
my own personal observation is concerned in 
regard to this matter, that the people are 
ahead of Con.^ress, and the soldiers far ahead 
of either. Your soldiers call upon you to 
make your laws strinajent; they call upon you 
from the field to fill up the ranks ; they say 
there must be no skulking ; they say that all 
persons liable to be enrolled must be enrolled ; 
that persons liable to be drafted should be 
drafted; and that it is unfair ihat they alone 
should bear the burdens and be placed in the 
front of battle while others are shirking from 
taking their fair share. And the people are 
not far behind the soldiers in this matter. I 
have yet to learn that any man upon either 
floor of Congress is unlikely to be sastained by 
an intelligent constituency anywhere through- 
out the land for an attgmpt to pass efficient 
laws in order to fill up the ranks of the army, 
to enable us to put down this accursed and 
damnable rebellion. 

Now, sir, this section opens fairly that dis- 
cussion, and I expected gentlemen to take 
position upon the one side or the other. This 
section is not that oppressive and tyrannical 
section which it is supposed to be. If the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Chanler] 
thinks that in any of its features it is too harsh, 
let him offer amendments : but so far, his op- 
position is to the whole section ; and I insist 
upon it that that opposition only means, as he 
and the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Stevens] frankly avow, opposition to the whole 
bill and the whole system. It is for the House 
to determine whether these gentlemen shall be 
allowed, in their hostility to the whole scheme 
of filling up our armies by a system of drafting 
at all, to accomplish that by defeating this sec- 
tion of the bill. 

I have no objection, so far as the penalty is 
concerned, that gentlemen should modify the 
language, so that they leave some substantial 
means provided in the law for enforcing its 
provisions. I have no objection to having this 
number of days of imprisonment reduced, say 
from thirty to twenty, and perhaps ten ; but 
twenty days would perhaps be the proper 
medium. But some penalty, some provision, 
something to compel a more perfect and com- 
plete and full enrollment of the citizens liable 
to draft, and to hold them to their duty to re- 
port themseves, and not skulk away, I believe 
essentially necessary as one of the features of 
a bill which is to be an improvement on the 
present enrollment law. 

Mr. CHANLER. I withdraw my amend- 
ment to the amendment, and move another 
amendment by inserting the word " intention- 
ally." My views upon this subject are cer- 
tainly well known. They have been boldly 



expressed both here and elsewhere ; and the 
difference between the gentleman from Ohio, 
tho chairman of the Committee on Military 
Afifairs, and myself, is exactly this — 

Mr. FAKNS WORTH. As the opinions of 
the gentleman from New York are so well 
known, both here and elsewhere, I suggest there 
is no necessity for repeating them. 

Mr. CHANLER. And the courtesy of the 
gentleman from Illinois is so well known that 
this impertinency is entirely unnecessary. 

In regard to the position of the chairman of 
the Committee on Military Afifairs and of my- 
self, the issue between us is exactly defined : I 
am in favor of increasing the Army ; so is he. 
We only differ as to the method. I oppose this 
bill because I think it is not an effectual means 
of raising troops ; he advocates it because he 
thinks it is. We agree upon the fact that the 
enrollment of the citizens may be necessary ; 
but we differ as to the means of forcing men 
into the ranks ; and we will differ very widely 
as to the character of substitutes which we will 
permit into the American armies. It is because 
of bills brought forward by that gentleman 
upon this floor that the American Army has 
been made the asylum of drunkards and lu- 
natics. It is because it has failed as a means 
cf enrolling and calling out the national forces 
in a time like this that I oppose this bill. The 
system has become simply a process of bounty 
jumping and bounty swindling throughout the 
country. It demands more than the ingenuity 
even of the chairman of the Committee on 
Military Affairs to prevent these creatures from 
battening upon their fellow-citizens. And yet 
the gentleman proposes to place this matter in 
the hands of the men whom I wish to oppose 
here, because they have exercised the powers 
conceded to them tyrannically. I believe that 
the class of men who have been appointed as 
provost marshals throughout this country, with 
many exceptions perhaps, but as a general rule, 
have been the subservient tools of the Secre- 
tary of War. 

I believe that the system of centralized mil- 
itary power organized under this bill would sap 
the foundations of our Government. I believe 
that every effort to remedy it would but per- 
petuate the evil and the error inherent in this 
bill and the system it establishes. I make no 
factious opposition here. I court nothing but 
an open debate and consideration of this sub- 
ject ; and it seems to me that the chairman of 
the Military Committee, knowing and anticipa- 
ting the position of the able chairman of the 
Committee of Ways and Means, has rather 
dodged a full debate. I recognize, sir, the 
apology which he made for limiting debate to 
ten minutes ; but it was done with a perfect 
knowledge on his part of the advantage of his 
position under such an arrangement. 

Sir, a bill of this character, involving as it 
does the depth and breadth of American liberty 



6 



and individual rights of every American citi- 
zen, cannot be d;scussed section by section 
■without the extraordinary acumen possessed 
bv the chairman of the Committee on Military 
Affairs who iramed the bill, and whose knowl- 
edge of tactics has been heretofore manifested 
in his management of troops in the field. 
There is a class of distinguished soldiers who 
have left the field of glory for the cupola of 
safety, and who now make it a matter of boast 
that they are no longer soldiers. [Cries of 
"Name!" "Name!"] Sir, we might have 
hoped that men of this class, who have carried 
the rank and file of our army into points of 
danger, would have better appreciated their 
position before the country when victory is 
crowning those who followed after them, and 
•when the cannon is baying forth the victory of 
the soldiers they once led. 

Sir, the crying evil of this whole system is 
based upon the very fact which has been allud- 
ed to in this debate ; it is owing to the system 
inaugurated by the partisan leaders of this Ad- 
ministration, which commissions as brigadiers 
men who are utterly ignorant of military sci- 
ence and even unschooled in the knowledge of 
militia training, and who lead their fellow- 
citizens to speedy death, to the dishonor of 
their country. 

The proper and available means of filling 
the ranks have been neglected, and unfit and 
incapable officers have been allowed to act in 
responsible positions. "The confidence of the 
soldier in his superior and of the citizen in his 
Government have been lost by the reckless 
practices and partisan policy of the republican 
leaders. We have but to take the record of 
the promotions to high commands from the be- 
ginning of the war to '.he present. It is not my 
object to assail individuals. The system is at 
fault. Let the system bear witness against 
these who abuse it if it be good, or let the sys- 
tem be improved if the fault lie at its door. Do 
not perpetuate error and evil in face of the 
terrible array of consequences known to every 
one who reads. 

A clear and good example of the evils of 
the policy of the Administration exists in the 
bad results produced by catering to the ambi- 
tion and kindred virtues peculiai to the politi- 
cal swashbucklers, Bobadils, Falstaffs, Bar- 
dolphs, Nyms, and ancient Pistols ; who traf- 
ficked in the military favor and prejudices of 
the people to secure for themselves the rank of 
brigadier, armed and equipped as the law 
directs, ignorant of tactics, swelled with the 
afflatus that rises in the rear " of the pomp 
and circumstance of glorious war." The brig- 
adier volunteers in embryo, raised, zealously 
and well, no doubt, regiment upon regiment, 
which they offered to the Administration in 
exchange for a commission for themselves. 
Some, but not all of these, were generals and 
colonels in buckram, and never led their men 



into battle ; others did lead their commands to 
distinction and extinction ; or wasted the mili- 
tary resources of the country in vain, crazy at- 
tempts to become heroes. Many of those have 
happily relinquished the sword for the gown, 
the pen, the plowshare, and politics. They 
have left the Army for the Army's good, to the 
true soldiers who learned their duty in the 
field or rose from the ranks. The intiuence of 
such men has been injurious to the service, 
not only among the officers, but among the 
men, and has been one of the prime causes of 
a lack of zeal among the people to enter the 
Army under the different calls for troops. 

Let the regular establishment be filled up to 
its standard before this cruel system of draft 
is again and again resorted to. The people 
look with horror at its injustice. It paralyzes 
the energies of our mechanical, agricultural, 
and commercial industry, and almost depopu- 
lates certain districts of their male inhabitants. 

Mr. SCHENCK. I wished merely to call 
attention to the difference in persons. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, I have offered this amend- 
ment with the view of perfecting the bill. I 
find that the position of the gentleman from 
New Jersey, [Mr. Rogers,] like that of other 
gentlemen, includiog the gentleman from New 
York, [Mr. Chanler,] is one of general hos- 
tility to the bill. The arguments presented are 
directed against the whole system. 

As to any disposition on my part to preclude 
proper discussion of this matter, the House 
will bear me witness that I have invited can- 
did and thorough discussion, such as our lim- 
ited time will allow. I have not been disposed 
to hurry this bill through without allowing the 
views of members to be heard. I appeal to 
the House in testimony of the fairness with 
which I have acted. 

As to the speech of the gentleman from New 
York [Mr. Chaxlee] — that " soldier of the Re- 
public," who, forgetting his chivalry, attacks 
another humble " soldier of the Republic " — 
I admit that I well understood that he had 
prepared a speech of an hour's length, for he 
so admonished the House ; but I did think 
that it would be easier for us to take it in small 
doses, and that we might in that way recover 
sooner from the infliction. Hence I found it 
rather an argument in favor of the ten min- 
utes' rule that, under it, that speech would be 
given to us in six successive charges. [Laugh- 
ter.] 

Mr. CHANLER. 1 congratulate the gentle- 
man on the working of the first dose. It 
seems to have operated very well. 

Mr. SCHENCK. Not much, sir. 

Mr. CHANLER. I shall supply the gentle- 
man with a repetition of the same dose. 

Mr. SCHENCK. Having left the tented 
field to come to the " cupola of safety," I hope 
to be defended hereafter by my friends, if I am 
incapable of taking care of myself, from any 



further attacks of this nature. I did not ex- 
pect to get quite so high from any help the 
gentleman might give me. [Laughter.] 

Mr. BLAINE. In order to meet objections 
made the other day to my amendment, I desire 
to modify it that it may meet general accep- 
tance. I modify the amendment so that it 
shall read : 

Provided, That in any call for troops, no county, town, 
towDtbip, ward, precinct, or election district, shall have 
credit except fur men actually furnished on said call or a 
preceding call by said county, town, township, w-ard, pre- 
cinct, or election district, and mustered into the military 
or naval service on the quota theieof. 

Mr. CHANLER. This, as I understand it, 
is an amendment to the second section, which 
relates to the question of quotas. Now, I wish 
to draw the attention of the House to that mat- 
ter, and to the existing confusion which is 
consequent upon it in every district in the 
countty. The whole military system has been 
thrown into confusion by the way those quotas 
have been distributed, and it is a question 
whether the trouble which wi.l follow this ef- 
fort may not be ruinous and fatal to the mili- 
tary organization of the country. There have 
been here from different sections of the coun- 
try legislative committees seeking for a fair 
adjustment of these quotas. The matter is in 
a perfect snarl, and the Provost Marshal Gen- 
eral seems to be in a muddle, and a fair 
adjustment of the draft is impossible under the 
existing system. From time to time I have 
endeavored to secure, through the action of this 
House, full and satisfactory information rela- 
tive to the assignment of these quotas and the 
basis upon which they are made, but I havo 
been unable to accomplish my purpose. 

Now, sir, I am opposed to having any 
amendment made here in ignorance and with- 
out sufficient and fiill information before this 
body. I have no doubt that the gentleman 
who has charge of this bill is perfectly sincere 
and honest it his efforts. I do not impute to 
him or to any other member who is acting in 
defence of this bill, or to those who, in an offi- 
cial capacity, are trying to carry out the law 
of Congress, anything but fair motives. My 
object is net, as some gentlemen would have 
the House believe, to oppose this bill on all 
occasions. I am opposed to the bill, but I am 
ready to modify my action upon fall and just 
information given by the Department, so that 
we can act understandicgly. 

This section should be amended so as to meet 
two difficulties which arise under it. The par- 
ties having no residence are, as I understand 
it, aliens or freedmea. Now, sir, there exists 
in the Army to day a great source of weakness, 
and a great depreciation of the value and dig- 
nity of your soldiers. By the introduction of 
aliens into the Army you have depreciated the 
value of your volunteers. And then you de- 
grade the American soldier by placing him 
side by side with the slave just set free, men 



without historical association, and up to that 
time without rights. Now, sir, I maintain that 
such a policy is bad, and that this section is 
inherently bad from that stand-point. 

A substitute is a luxury for the rich. The 
draft must fall, like death and taxation, at last 
on the poor man. By the enrollment act we 
have called out a gigantic standing Army ; but 
for some cause, only known at the War Office, 
if even known there, it has never been consol- 
idated and organized into a thorough and har- 
monious force. We have made " I will " wait 
upon " I would." We have delayed so long 
and changed so often that improvement of this 
law seems impossible. The Administration 
raised troops and money too easily to stop and 
think on consequences. As if not content 
with the evils we had, our discreet rulers flew 
to those they knew not of. We bought and 
bribed the slave from his master and turned 
him into a military machine, commanded by 
ofacers holding commissions directly from the 
President, and then we put these colored 
troops by that course next in rank to the reg- 
ulars, reducing the white volunteer force to a 
third rank, and the doomed conscripts to a 
fourth rank in the service. We raised the negro 
to an equality with the white by statute, but 
put the white below the negro in arms. It was 
degradation to the white race to put arms into 
the hands of the negro, but it is putting the 
ruling race beneath degradation to subordinate 
them to the black freedman. The result has 
become apparent in the difficulty of filling the 
quota?, when the regular Army recruiting offi- 
cer comes in competition with the volunteer 
recruiting committee. The enlistnr^nis are 
more in favor of the regular Army recruiting 
offices and the colored troops, notwithstanding 
the smaller bounty offered by the Government. 
The white substitute is being driven from the 
Army by the lower-priced negro, invited to 
take his place in the van in the onward march 
to glory. 

Thus far the effect has only been seen in the 
volunteer force. But if this war continues 
much longer, and the black man is the hero 
some members claim that he is, the same re- 
sult must eventually follow in the regular Ar- 
my. The rapid changes of revolution, the 
demand for labor, the scarcity of money, or ra- 
ther the excessive expansion of the currency, 
the demand for troops to supply the waste of 
war and disease, the cheapness of the black 
compared with the white" soldier, must tend to 
increase the enlistment of colored troops, and 
finally will force this Administration or its 
successors to hold its own at the back of an 
Army of freedmen. The standing Army will 
then, indeed, be compact and serviceable for 
the most despotic uses. Servile in its nature, 
it will become the ready tool of tyranny as soon 
as the future military dictator, for whom all 
these things seem to have been prepared, shall 



summon the people of this Union to surrender 
to his genius and his arms. 

Further than this, owing to the same causes 
just enumerated, suppose the Army be recruit- 
ed, not from the negro, but from the foreign 
substitute just landed on our shores, brave, 
hardy, full of adventure, with the world before 
him, and no cares or kin to check his onward 
course of fearless enterprise. How long will he 
remain a mere soldier in our ranks ? What 
does he know of or care for the Constitution, or 
the time-honored institutions of any State, or of 
the Union ? He will exclaim, " The world is 
my field and its wealth my prize." 

In a collision with Europe, should such oc- 
cur, having driven the American citizen from 
our Army by underbidding him, having cut off 
all sympathy of the great mass of the people 
with this Government by trampling on their 
most sacred and most cherished riglits, how do 
you calculate to again arouse the volunteer 
spirit in the nation ? We have insulted a free 
and courageous people by this conscription. 
We reduce the volunteer to a mercenary by the 
bounty. We have depreciated the alien mer- 
cenary by enrolling the slave, and the slave has 
degraded the career of the soldier. Such is the 
promise held out by our present policy for the 
future condition of the Army when the ex- 
isting force of veterans is disbanded or de- 
stroyed. 

Again the policy pursued invites either, first, 
a collision between the white and black races, 
with banfthment or annihilation of the latter ; 
or, second, a surrender of the bayonet to the 
black mdn while the white race holds the 
sword. This experiment has been tried by 
England in India, we know with what fearful 
consequences. It has been practically the sys- 
tem in Mexico until the Spanish Creoles were all 
officers, and the private soldiers of a feeble, 
mixed race, forming an army weak in time of 
war, and turbulent and mercenary in time of 
peace. The bayonets and artillery of France, 
wielded by Frenchmen, commanded by French- 
men, will soon fix the fate of that military 
organization. 

The tendency of the policy of putting one 
race over another is to make the officer despise 
his men and the men hate their officers. Bona- 
parte crushed the power of the old French 
nobility in the armies of France at a single 
blow when he declared that every soldier of the 
great nation carried the baton of a marshal of 
France iritis knapsack. Can we bestow such 
a boon on the private soldiers in our armies as 
now constituted ? Have you not, in fact, es- 
tablished a military aristocracy in the heart of 
our Army. We exclude the black recruit from 
.the honors of his career, and declare he shall 
die that another may attain them. Sir, the 
policy of the Administration is logically driv- 
ing the Army to discord and revolt. The party 
in power must take one horn of the dilemma 



their conduct creates, and commission our 
black soldiers as officers, or they must follow 
the consequences of the opposite, and while 
declaring all men free and equal, and uttering 
promises of freedom to the negro slave, they 
must hold him in the more miserable plight of 
an armed serf, doomed to the toil of battle, the 
sufferings and sickness which a soldier's liCe 
entails, and finally to die in military shackles, 
the victim of a hope raised by a false fanati- 
cism for a political advantage, created by this 
Administration to avoid the dangers it forces 
him to meet in its defence. 

I am opposed to the establishment of black 
military serfs in American armies. I am op- 
posed to the degradation of our white soldier by 
the policy of this Administration. I am op- 
posed to promoting the black freedman, how- 
ever brave he may be, to the rank of an officer 
in the United States Army. 

But there is a project on foot in that direc- 
tion, and finally must succeed if the present 
policy continues, and the Republican party re- 
mains in power. European Governments may 
do this thing with impunity, because an aris- 
tocracy, social, legal, and supreme, controls all 
the avenues to power, rank, and honor. In my 
opinion, if the negro is admitted as a soldier 
into our armies, he will be subdued by the su- 
perior race and become the base of a military 
aristocracy in fact if not in law ; and the same 
result that followed slavery in the South will 
be seen wherever the negro is introduced as a 
prevailing and permanent element of society, 
namely, a white aristocracy of superior caste, 
rising on the shoulders of the negro to the mas- 
tery of the poor whites around them. It is 
fixed in the law of race, and is immutable. I 
have no fear for the superior race, I only fear 
lest the liberties of the people may be sub- 
verted by a military aristocracy or an aristoc- 
racy of caste. The conflict is upon us, and we 
must meet it openly and frankly. And in the 
same spirit of frankness it must be admitted 
that had the Administration adhered to the 
practice established in the Constitution, of 
leaving the manner of raising quotas to the 
States themselves, then no collision as to the 
relative claims or rights of soldiers of the 
United States would have arisen. Each State 
would have regulated that for itself. The con- 
flict of races would have been kept from our 
national Congress, and the agitation of the 
public mind by so absorbing and deep a sub- 
ject have remained locked up in the precincts 
of the several States, like fire, or steam, or 
gunpowder, controlled, useful and beneficial. 

A new danger seems to hang over us in the 
gathering storm of foreign war. It may be far 
off, or at this moment a secret council of the 
crowned heads of Europe may be partitioning 
this Union among themselves or their assigns, 
as they did once for unhappy Poland ; as they 
have just done for subjugated Mexico, and the 



9 



republic of St. Domingo. The course of 
France, Spain, and England in regard to those 
distracted and betrayed republics has roused 
our people and this House to an attitude of 
watchful defiance. The Monroe doctrine in 
its first and highest sense has been reasserted 
here and accepted by the whole country as a 
pledge of our future policy. We have de- 
clared that no monarchy can be established 
and upheld here with our consent. Under 
such circumstances, with our knowledge of the 
facility with which the negro is induced, by 
flattering promises, to desert his home and the 
associations of his life, is it not well to be 
guarded in the trust we put in him after our 
failure to fulfil the fond hope of his ignorant 
nature, and our selfish use of his race ? With 
Europe, rich in the resources of war and di- 
plomacy, with everything to gain by tamper- 
ing with and protecting the black race as an 
element of discord in our midst, we may find 
ourselves in the relation to our freedmen that 
the rebel States now hold to U3 in the treat- 
ment of their slaves, with this disadvantage to 
the United States, that we have armed the 
slave and trained him to a freedom which he 
will never relinquish, while the unarmed slaves 
of the South dare not turn upon their masters 
in arms. The Administration, by the conscrip- 
tion, seems likely to force the white laboring 
classes out of the Army to give place to an 
element which would prove hostile in foreign 
war to the very system which liberated and 
armed them. 

But there is another point of view I would 
present in this connection. If the conscrip- 
tion has been a failure in the war against the 
rebels, what have we to hope from it in con- 
flict with Europe ? Substitutes fresh from the 
Old World may or may not become merce- 
nary. They might be true to our flag, which 
they never saw until enlisted, through all the 
fortunes of war; or they might, after a pro- 
tracted contest, take our cause into their own 
hands and go over to the enemy ; or, like their 
Vandal ancestors, put the price of the Repub- 
lic in a scale and kick the beam ; or, like the 
Huns, treat first with the enemies of the Re- 
public, and coolly betray the cause they rushed 
so wildly to defend. As the representative of 
a large foreign population, I can testify, did 
the history of the war not make it useless, to 
the love the adopted citizen bears to our com- 
mon country, to our free institutions, and to 
her flag. But every battle-field is a glorious 
witness to their zeal, bravery, and patriotism. 
I deem our cause sate in such hands ; but the 
high bounty and the general system introduced 
by the enrollment act tend to drive all our 
citizens, native and foreign-born, from the ser- 
vice, and have caused to be imported direct 
from abroad an alien and perhaps dangerous 
population, in every degree diff'erent from the 
immigrant who formerly brought the simple 



virtues and sterling habits of the laboring 
classes of the Old World from the field, the 
workshop, and the mine. 

Mr. BLAINE. I move, pro forma, to strike 
out the last word of the amendment. I wish 
to say to the gentleman from New York that I 
do not understand him as opposing my amend- 
ment. He has not spoken in reference to it 
at all. 

Mr. CHANLER. I spoke to the section. 

Mr. SCHENCK. Mr. Speaker, to remove 
the objection made by the gentleman from 
New York, [Mr. Chanler,] I move to amend 
the second section by inserting after the word 
•' residence " the words " within the United 
States ;" so that it will read, "if such persons 
have an actual residence within the United 
States." 

The amendment was agreed to. 

Mr. CHANLER. Mr. Speaker, I will join 
most cordially in every effort which the chair- 
man of the Committee on Military Affairs may 
make to do away with this system of bounty- 
jumping and substitute brokerage. There has 
never been in the history of this or any other 
country a more corrupt or detestable organiza- 
zatiou of men than those who centre around 
the recruiting offices under the name of sub- 
stitute brokers. And this circumstance fur- 
nishes a peculiar illustration of the argument 
which I have heretofore urged and will con- 
tinue to urge against the whole system of 
drafting. Commend it as you may, " the trail 
of the serpent " is over it still. It is corrupt- 
ing the army and demoralizing the whole 
country. 

All the evils resulting from this law seem to 
grow and look more dangerous in presence of 
the power which it confers upon the Execu- 
tive. There is not a stronger government ex- 
tant than this. It is useless and unnecess'ary 
to discuss the course which leads to the grant 
of powera to the President. The bald fact 
shines out on every page of our annals during 
this rebellion. No czar, emperor, king, or po- 
tentate, has a greater revenue, troops organ- 
ized in larger armies, or more extensive na- 
vies, than those which obey the undisputed will 
of the President of the United States at this 
moment. Billions of money fill his cofi'ers ; 
millions of slaves, just set free or soon to be, 
bow in servile admiration of his august name. 
Millions of free men depend on his will for life, 
liberty, and happiness ; and his will is law. 
No constitutional check holds him, as it once 
did his predecessors, in wholesome subordina- 
tion. His friends, his creatures, and his liber- 
ated slaves watch his eye for the motive to 
their every act — subservient, devoted, or mer- 
cenary. Politician, soldier, or citizen — all will- 
ingly look, or are forced to look, to him as 
the source of power in this Government — for 
one will rules here. His courtly press calls 
him sovereign, and chronicles his every deed 



10 



as of royal import. We carry Csesar and his 
fortunes. The nation is a representative de- 
mocracy; its capitol is a monarchy; perhaps 
some may prefer to call it a republic. A dis- 
tinction without a difiference — tyranny under a 
sacred name. Venice was a republic — power- 
ful, victorious, and great. Her executive a 
doge, who ruled by a secret council of ten for 
life. Our Executive rules by the secret coun- 
cil of his Cabinet for a limited term. Eng- 
land under Cromwell was a republic ; but we 
would search in vain for representative liberty 
during the usurpation of the Protector. 

Have we not reason to pause here, before 
conferring new powers, or at least to consider 
the wisdom of revoking, at this time, some of 
the unlimited powers already conferred by this 
military system upon the Executive? Have 
we not good reason to apprehend that, at some 
not very remote period in this struggle, our 
cause may be sacrificed on the altar of personal 
ambition ? We have made the prize so great, 
the power so vast, the task so easy, to such as 
dare " wade through slaughter to a throne," 
that prudence, if not patriotism, should check 
our headlong course of hasty legislation, in 
adding to or continuing the power of the sword 
and purse, in the grasp of one man, to our own 
humiliation, and perhaps our destruction. If 
we can boast of a mimic little Cromwell, " guilt- 
less of his country's blood," who has led our 
puritan hosts to doughty deeds, how long are 
we to await the coming of some silent and 
selfish General Monk ? 

There is a similitude in the facts and dangers 
which link the spirits of liberty and fanaticism 
now as they were linked in the days of the great 
Cromwell. May not the Puritans of to-day 
seize with reckless hands the mace which marks 
the presence of popular sovereignty in this 
Hall, and in the words of their archetype bil 
some soldier of fortune at their heels " Take 
away that bauble ?" They have long since be- 
headed the Constitution. History repeats her- 
self, and teaches by example ; but nations are 
dull scholars, and fanatics are blind. Have 
they not already forced you to succumb to their 
dictation, and robbed you of some of the most 
honored and best established privileges of this 
body? 

Does the Executive really need your aid to 
carry on this Government ? I think not. He 
seems to have thought not when he pledged, 
after adjournment of the last Congress, the 
credit of the nation without law, and in defi- 
ance of the peculiar right of this House to in- 
itiate all money bills ; and allow me to remind 
this House that it was in connection with the 
military power that the President committed 
that treasonable breach of law. Practically, 
the Executive is now independent of all legis- 
lative authority in this Government. Actu- 
ally, the conscripts, the veterans, and colored 
troops are his own, and not the nation's, sol- 



diers. He commissions their ofi&cers directly 
himself, or through his partisans. It is true 
the past career of the different Presidents of 
this Union give us little to fear from personal 
malevolence or desperate daring ; but there is 
a political cunning which sometimes covers 
ambition with a comic mask, and serves as a 
shield behind which to shoot fatal shafts at the 
liberties of the people, the rights of the States, 
the spirit of the Constitution, and the existence 
of this Union. I will not presume to probe 
the motives of the Administration ; we are 
asked to believe that they are good. The 
present Chief Magistrate may become as fa- 
mous as any of the great founders of the Union 
he has sworn to protect. He may be as wise 
and brave as Washington ; as bold and firm as 
Jackson ; a3 upright and politic as Adams ; 
as great and good as Madison ; as continental 
and broadly national as Monroe ; but his course 
has not yet developed fully the qualities which 
may promise such fame for himself, or such 
glory for his country, as cluster around the 
name of the humblest of his predecessors. 
Now we may not praise him. 

" Et laudas uullos uisi mortuos poetas." 

H'.s labors are those of Hercules, but he is 
without claims as a hero. The Augean stable 
of the Treasury baulks his genius and para- 
lyzes his nerve. ' His tasks are already so la- 
borious that no human hand can perform them 
alone. And he is no demigod. He may be the 
instrument of the ruler of nations to scourge 
us to humility, but need we anticipate him by 
useless degradation and by abandonment of 
our duty, by adding to his powers at this 
time ? Should we not rather seek now to limit 
them ? 

Sir, let us remember that we too are instru- 
ments to check the overbearing conduct of the 
Executive in the administration of this Govern- 
ment ; that we are here to protect the people 
of this Union amid the confusion and conflict 
of this civil war, in the reasonable hope that in 
peace posterity may bless our names. And with 
the growing likelihood of peace diminishes the 
necessity of conscription. The people look to 
their Representatives as agents for good and not 
for evil, as swift messengers to bring glad tid- 
ings and avert the sorrows, if possible, which 
attend on nations as on men. The burdens of 
the peojile now are almost too heavy to be 
borne by even a self-governed nation. They 
look to us for prompt and effectual relief. I 
trust the time for the realization of their hope 
has come. 

I move to amend the amendment by strik- 
ing out the last words "and draft." 

Mr. SCHENCK. I raise a point of order. I 
have moved to strike out certain words in this 
section. Is it in order to move as an amend- 
ment to my motion, to strike out a portion only 
of what I propose to strike out ? 

The SPEAKER. It is in the nature of 



11 



an amendment to an amendment, and is in or- 
d.r. 

Mr. SCHENCK. Very well. I will only 
say that I thiuk the gentleman from New York 
[Mr. Chanler] has already made six ten-min- 
ute speeches, and he only threatened us with 
an hour's speech at first. 

Mr. CHANLER. That is but another speci- 
men of the small bullying which is character- 
istic of the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. 
ScHEXCK.] This effort on the part of that 
gentleman to cramp debate is evidently merely 
for the purpose of gratifying his own peculiar 
way of wriggling out of a difficulty, and shows 
remarkable ingenuity, perhaps, but very little 
moral courage. 

This section is, probably, beyond all others, 
the most positive proof of the utter failure of 
this system as a means of enrolling and calling 
out the armies of the United States. Is there 
anything that could show a stronger conviction 
of the utter unwillingness of the American 
citizen to fight for the institutions of his coun- 
try, and to die for the cause in which he has 
so often and so well fought, as to go forth 
throughout the length and breadth of the laud 
to capture minors who are not yet citizens, not 
yet entitled, under the law of this country, to 
bear the burdens and discharge the duUes of 
citizenship ; men who, as has been shown by 
my colleague [Mr. Kernan] and the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Johnson,] owe alle- 
giance elsewhere ? By the system which you 
have inaugurated, you have, under the plea of 
" necessity," exhausted all the elements which 
should form a strong and patriotic Army. You 
have sought the slave as a substitute for the 
soldier. By degrading the position of the sol- 
dier you have failed to fill the armies by en- 
listing the citizens of the country. And it is 
now proposed to seize upon those who, from 
political necessity or the spirit of enterprise, 
have come from foreign lands to seek the shel- 
ter of our flag and Constitution, embracing the 
in vital ion which we ourselves have extended. 
This is a most effective way of writing down 
the American citizen as afraid to meet the 
dangers which surround his country at this 
epoch. 

Let this Government rely upon the constitu- 
tional provisions for the raising of our armies 
and the calling out of the citizens by the 
States, and we shall need no such provisions as 
these. Let the Government rely upon the 
spirit of the people ; let it rely upon the vol- 
unteers of the country. We have relied upon 
them heretofore. The armies in the field to- 
day embrace many veterans who rushed to the 
front to serve the country. The heroes of 
General Sherman's army are not the conscripts; 
they are not the emancipated slaves; they are 
not the aliens, whom gentlemen would here- 
after draft to form into an army for the carry- 
ing out of tyrannical purposes. No, sir, the 



victories won at the South are won by Ameri- 
can citizens who have voluntarily, from mo- 
tives of patriotism, gone into the service. 
They are not hirelings from every quarter of 
the globe, brought here by the captivating 
bounties which this system of draft has caused 
to be offered. They are not the miserable 
wretches who, having fled from slavery, have 
found a refuge beneath the flag of the United 
States because they wear the iiniform of sol- 
diers. No, sir, they are the men who have re- 
mained in the field, and, spite of trials and dis- 
comforts, have fought their way through to vic- 
tory. They demand from us proper com- 
panions in the conflict. They demand from 
us a proper estimate of their services and 
their virtues. Let us no longer depreciate the 
American soldier to that contemptible stand- 
ard to which all systems like the draft must 
reduce him. The Constitution of our country, 
the character of our people, the whole tenor 
of our institutions are in fiavor of that system 
by which the citizen brings his free-will offer- 
ings to the temple of liberty. Yet gentlemen 
in this House seek to pervert that principle and 
set at naught the Constitution by advocating 
measures like this. 

Sir, the military necessity under which this 
system of draft began has ceased ; but the ne- 
cessities of trade still exist. Stop the trade of 
your ganerals in the field in cotton ; prevent 
them from falling victims to the sweet influ- 
ence of sugar ; stop their yearnings to finger 
the glittering metal as it gleams upon them 
through the open door of a fire-proof safe ; 
teach them that to covet is crime. Sir, rely 
upon the people. Rely upon the military 
character which they have shown in the past. 
You cannot get by importation better soldiers 
than the natives of your own soil. Do not go 
begging from country to country to fill up the 
ranks of American armies. Do not rely upon 
the " American citizen of African descent ;" 
but rely upon the white citizen, the man whose 
hopes and aspirations are all wrapped up in the 
liberty and glory of his country and the main- 
tenance of his flas:. 

I think this amendment is injudicious, and 
will not effect the object the gentleman has in 
view. I believe from the organization of the 
bureau having charge of this whole matter of 
enrollment, and from all the facts connected with 
this matter of quotas, it is utterly useless to en- 
deavor to amend this section until we strike out 
all after the eighth line. By this section you 
give power to the Provost Marshal General to 
make such rules and give such instructions to 
the assistant provost marshals, the boards of 
enrollment, and mustering officers as shall be 
necessary for the faithful enforcement of the 
provisions of this section, to the end that fair 
and just credit shall be given to every section 
of the country. You surrender to that officer 
full power with regard to the adjustment of 



12 



this whole matter, in the face of existing evils, 
in the face of this disordered system in which 
confusion worse confounded glares through 
military bureaus like a monster of crime caged 
in an arsenal of deadly weapons, threatening 
to break his bonds and destroy his keeper and 
his prison. You surrender power through the 
Provost Marshal General to the Executive, 
whose authority is already too great, and is be- 
coming dangerous. 

Sir, in authorizing the Provost Marshal 
General to make such rules and regulations as 
he may see fit, we have no guaranty that 
those rules and regulations will be such as a 
proper sense of duty should induce this body 
to provide for. There is no section of the 
country which has not been harassed by the 
intolerable outrages committed by these boun 
ty-swindlers, who are the natural offspring of 
this system of drafting. The Provost Marshal 
has thus far produced a great deal of confusion 
and misunderstanding. When the gentlemen 
of the Military Committee say that this system 
is as bad as the slave trade, I say yes, indeed 
it is the sum of all villainies. But the gentle- 
man from Ohio, [Mr. Garfield,] a member 
of that Committee, says that, eo nomine, he 
will not assail the bounty swindlers. Why 
not ? Because he is afraid to interfere in th d 
trade. He dare not assail this class of wealthy 
scoundrels whom he and his colleagues have 
called into being under this system of con- 
scription. He and his friends, who have been 
howling about the horrors of slavery, and the 
abominations of that trade in human flesh, 
who have succeeded by such appeals in excit- 
ing this country to civil war, now refuse, in the 
face of an acknowledged evil created by them- 
selves, to assail that evil by its name on this 
floor. 

Sir, I am not astonished that the gentlemen 
on the Military Committee are desirous to give 
to the Provost Marshal General full power to 
make a fair adjustment of the credits of each 
district. They know that any adjustment 
which he may make cannot be a fair adjust- 
ment. They know tbat this conscription sys- 
tem teems with crime and bristles with horrid 
abuses. They know that for an honest man to 
undertake to regulate this matter of drafting is 
to mix himself with crime and brand himself 
with infamy. Since the conscription law be- 
came the basis of our military code, every citi- 
zen who could bought a substitute ; every 
township vied with its neighbor ia raising the 
price of blood, until the market for human be- 
ings became like the famous slave pens of 
which gentlemen on the other side talk so long 
and so loud. A new trade is springing up 
among us, with its ramifications reaching to 
the remote regions of northern and western 
Europe. Soon Asia, and perhaps Africa, may 
be honored by the emissaries of modern phi- 
lanthropists on the other side of the House, 



with an invitation to furnish substitutes to fill 
the quota of certain States, under the repeated 
calls for more men to carry out the iu definite 
policy of this administration. No man knows 
to-day whether we may not in a year from this 
be forced to import coolies from China, or a 
body guard from the sable army of the King 
of Dahomey ; nor is it unreasonable to sup- 
pose, from our past conduct, that, so long as 
the carnage can be fatal to others than our- 
selves, we will care to stop its progress, or turn 
the policy of the administration back to the 
original sources of power fixed by the Consti- 
tution. 

This whole scheme for raising an army 
seems not only the mo£."t tyrannical measure 
ever passed by the legislature of a free peo- 
ple, but it is abhorrent to any sentiment of 
justice and civilization. It cannot be urged 
under the specious plea of military necessity. 
Our armies are victorious. The rebtllion is 
crushed, if not utterly overthrown. Peace 
must soon follow victory. Our victorious troops 
are now achieving the catastrophe which over- 
takes traitors in arms. The coming spring 
will bring with it the renewed vigor of our 
veterans in the field, and every regiment may 
be fiUed by a proper appeal to the patriotism 
of the people to fight for the cause of their 
country in the future as in the past ; then as 
at the beginning of the war. But this new 
call is a threat, a scandal, and an injustice. It 
puts a new and keener edge upon the blood- 
hound instincts of the bounty swindler, raises 
the price of human flesh in the shambles of 
our military bureau, and brands a zealous and 
brave people with insult and ignominy. If our 
forces need replenishing, use the legitimate 
means furnished by the Constitution. Rely on 
the States for support. If the national exist- 
ence is threatened, call out the whole white 
male population without distinction, between 
the proper and usual military ages fixed by 
custom and experience. But do not confirm, 
l)y a continuation of this law, the dangerous, 
unnecessary, unconstitutional precedent which 
hangs about the neck of this bill, and would, 
but for the strong arm of the Executive, and 
the audacity of his Cabinet, strangle it in this 
or any other Congress of a free people. 

The bounty is a medium for filling the ranks 
with lunatics, convicted criminals, and drunk- 
en dupes, who no one but he who escapes con- 
scription by their aid will deny make turbulent 
and bad soldiers. The madhouse and the jail 
are filched to save sane and capable citizens 
from a positive duty. The strictest law to pre- 
vent enlisting unfit persons cannot remedy the 
evil. Evasion of such hard, and unfair, and 
narrow enactments as conscription in this 
country is connived at and encouraged by pop- 
ular opinion ; and until the violator of the 
law be " actually in the land or naval forces, 
or in the militia when in actual service in time 



13 



of war or public danger," there is no constitu- 
tional power which can deprive him of a trial by 
jury, the consequences of which may easily be 
foreseen, namely, he would be almost certain 
to escape final conviction by the local civil 
courts ; or the whole country must be put un- 
der martial law by the enlarged powers of a 
military commission created for these special 
evils and to correct a wrong inseparable from 
the draft and bounty. 

The bounty system as now established is 
the means of filling quotas of States on paper, 
but does not fill the Army with soldiers ; and 
induces men to desert, to re-enlist for a new 
bounty. Veterans, the main stay of every ar- 
my, are seduced from their old regiments to 
enlist in those being newly organized. The 
organization of the Army is thereby impaired. 
It offers a premium to vagabonds and thieves 
to sell themselves as substitutes to the substi- 
tute broker, enlist and demoralize the charac- 
ter of the Array. 

Great injustice is done to certain States by 
the bi"be offered through local and State boun- 
ties. The less wealthy State, being thereby 
deprived of her legitimate means of filling her 
quota by substitutes, is finally compelled to 
resort to a draft, while her rich neighbor saves 
her citizens from that scourge at the expense 
of a few dollars, and recruits her regiments 
with men not her citizens. The bounty system 
permits the citizens to evade military duty, one 
of the most important that rests upon him, 
while it creates a mercenary army and puts 
the existence of the Union in jeopardy. To 
enforce the draft ia each congressional district, 
the right of trial by jury must be superseded 
by a military commission, which is a most dan- 
gerous precedent,if not utterly unconstitutional. 
It produces a conflict between the court of law 
and the military tribunals. 

The bad management, vacillation, and incom- 
petency of the officers of the Government 
having charge of the draft, the inherent defects 
of the system, have stopped volunteering, and 
made high bounties necessary, although the 
country has, according to the best authority, 
more men in it fit for duty to-day than when 
the war began. 

There is no want of men to fill the Army ; 
but there is no sympathy in the hearts of the 
people with the reckless and wicked system by 
which the enlistments are made and the war 
conducted. The apathy of the people is a re- 
buke to the Administration. It is a political 
Nemesis pursuing a party which has insulted a 
devoted and eager nation by fastening on it a 
conscript law in violation of every instinct of 
a free representative Government. The curse 
which ever follows cruelty and tyranny is close 
upon this Administration. The thousands of 
brave men butchered in the Wilderness are 
now needed to take the field for an onward 
march. The Wilderness refuses to give up its 



dead ; the living are loth to perish in the Wil- 
derness ; each man would sacrifice his neigh- 
bor as a scape-goat in this tribute of blood. 
The people of the North who protested so often 
and so vainly against the violations of the 
Constitution by the party in power ; the Demo- 
cratic masses who dared to rebuke the mad 
career of the majority by sending a strong Op- 
position to Congress, are now soon lo be forced 
into the Army to sustain those who never 
ceased reviling them as traitors and as sym- 
pathizers with the enemy they are invited to 
fight. Why do you trust your cause to men 
you deem traitors ? Why do you call on the 
people of New York city to sustain this Ad- 
ministration by its quota ? Is there not dan- 
ger that the Army made up of such men as 
you say they are will turn on you? Why does 
the United States recruit among men whom 
their whole policy has exasperated and insulted, 
and who have been robbed, kidnapped, and 
imprisoned at will by taxation, conscription, 
and arbitrary arrests ? Are you afraid to 
take the field yourselves, that you intrust the 
cause of emancipation and the honor of your 
country to men whom you daily accuse of 
treason ? 

Can this Administration complain that the 
people do not enlist as volunteers ? Certainly 
not. When they offered their services to the 
country they were ordered back with a threat 
that a draft would supply the soldiers needed 
for this war by this Administration. The 
draft is the result of our policy ; bounty-swind- 
ling is the result of the draft. It rests like a 
pestilential cloud over the whole nation, forbo- 
ding corruption, usurpation, and crime — cur- 
ruption of the people, usurpation by the Exec- 
utive, crime by the despicable tools who hunt 
for substitutes and trade in the lives of their 
fellow-men. Fellow-men ! No, sir ; such crea- 
tures have no fellows save fiends and vipers. 
The pir?,te who scuttles a ship at sea, steals 
the cargo, and kills the crew, or sends them to 
the bottom with the ship ; the murderer who 
calmly plans his crime while enjoying the hos- 
pitality of his victim ; the wretch who fires the 
house of the unwary citizen whose doors were 
opened in a spirit of charity to a seeming 
wanderer ; the false friend who lures a confiding 
soul to ruin, are the fit companions of those 
who live by this trade in human flesh — " the 
sum of all villainies." 

Sir, in view of the depraved, dangerous, and 
unjust character of this system, the natural 
result of the enrollment acts passed by this 
House, it is not unreasonable to suppose that 
some broad, sound and patriotic reason would 
have been advanced in extenuation of this 
amendment to the existing law. Perhaps the 
chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs 
has some most excellent argument in reserve. 
Up to this date Congress and the country have 
been kept in the dark as to the course to be 



14 



followed in regard to the new call of the Pres- 
ident. Up to a few days since it was ofi&cially 
announced that the quota of the city of New 
York would amount to four thousand four 
hundred and thirty-three men as originally 
called for. Now, by a juggle in the war office 
and a ukase from the Provost Marshal Gen- 
eral, we have been ordered to furnish twenty- 
one thousand men in a few weeks from this 
date. Since then, without due explanation, 
but on the " ipse dixit'' of the Secretary of 
War, another change has been made. To- 
morrow we may have another decree fixing 
another quota, and that, after the large and 
repeated calls for troops from that devoted 
city during this war. 

The speculators in human flesh throng to 
New York city from all sections to outbid one 
another in the market furnished by immigra- 
tion and created''by conscription. In self-de- 
fence, to meet the exigencies of the case, and 
if possible make good out of evil, our local 
board of supervisors, made up equally of both 
political parties, have organized a committee 
who regulate the matter as far as lies in their 
power, at once protecting the poor victim of 
this law, and regulating the nefarious traffic by 
a reasonable standard. TV ■) plague has been 
introduced by the party in power here, who 
should have protected us, and from whom there 
is no appeal ; in despair from its ravages we 
have inoculated those in our midst, willing to 
suffer, that the whole body-politic may not be 
corrupted and then sacrificed in their defence- 
less ignorance. 

The same evil exists in every congressional 
district, in every town and city of the country. 
The memorial of the mayor of Philadelphia 
and others, members of the Loyal League of 
that city, is a complete and forcible appeal in 
behalf of decency, humanity, and justice, 
against this system. The Legislature of Rhode 
Island has petitioned for a delay of the new 
draft. A commission from the Legislature of 
Pennsylvania has asked for mercy from the 
Executive under this cruel law. The whole 
nation will soon raise a hue and cry against 
the perpetrators, aiders, abettors, and origina- 
tors of the nefarious scheme, or sink itself un- 
der the odium of its complicity with crimes 
Christianity forbids and virtue detests, and live 
on demoralized and disgraced before the world. 
The military system of the State is rotten, and 
if borne with longer, threatens to convert the 
whole country into one mass of moral and po- 
litical decay. It would be unjust to the mili- 
tary system which has grown so big and dan- 
gerous to its supporters under the enroll- 
ment act, were we to dismiss this subject without 
alluding to a change which has come over the 
spirit of its dream since the rebellion first 
broke out. I refer to those who reap the profit 
which war bestows ; not to the honest and 
brave soldiers in the ranks, nor to the skillful 



and pure-minded officers who have led them 
over hard -won fields to final victory. 

The object of this war has, in the minds of 
a certain class of soldiers, apparently under- 
gone a thorough revolution, a revolution with- 
in a revolution, a wheel within a wheel. To 
their minds the war has been perverted from 
the direction given it by the pure principles of 
patriotism which first moved the people to res- 
cue our flag from threatened dishonor. Spec- 
ulation, political ambition, party rivalry, and 
personal jealousy have wrought a baneful and 
wide-spread influence in our councils and in 
our camps. The maddest fanatics have be- 
come fat nabobs, princely scions of the royal 
tree of cotton. Battles have been "won and 
lost around the sacred precincts where lies in 
state the silver-haired King Cotton, who is torn 
piecemeal like another Priam in another Troy 
wrapped in flames, and perishes amid his 
lieges at the altar of Mammon. His baneful 
influence extends through the thick padding 
of a well-stuffed uniform and penetrates to the 
inner chords of the heart of these commercial 
heroes who pass within gunshet of a planta- 
tion. Sugar, too, has shed its sweet influence 
over the stern usages of war ; and generals 
who were blind to the blandishments and deaf 
to the prayers of their captives, and fierce in 
denunciation of traitors, have quelled the spirit 
of strife in obedience to the law of trade. Gold, 
the love of which is a root, has met with deep 
sympathy from the radicals, as its yellow face 
grinned through the bars of iron-proof safes 
with such winsomeness that the severest virtue 
has been induced to jeopardize honor, fame, 
and military rank, not in covetousness — oh, 
no ! nor with intent of felony, but for the bare 
satisfaction of fingering the precious stuff to 
soothe an itching palm for a year or so, in 
trust. 

The war necessity which once existed for 
the draft, according to the case made up by 
this Administration, sleeps, and no longer rings 
its steel chime as a knell to our suspended 
Constitution, the first and noblest victim to its 
rage. Commercial necessity and financial ne- 
cessity now chant a requiem over the fallen 
currency and crippled credit of the country, 
both " in extremis^'' moribund of superficial 
fanaticism and internal corruption. The plea 
— cruel, tyrannical, overwhelming — of military 
necessity is gone as an argument from this 
Administration, and I hope this place will 
know it no more. With it should disappear 
the whole superstructure of draft, confiscation, 
arbitrary arrests, and the executive nebulae of 
proclamations which have so streaked the sky 
that the stars and stripes can scarcely be dis- 
tinguished. It is now time to set the military 
system of the country free forever from this 
plea of necessity. Limit the exploits of our 
generals to the legitimate trade of war and we 
will not need the repeated calls for drafts. 



15 



• Limit our military expeditions to conquering 
tiie armies and taking the forts — Fisher and 
others like it ; forbid and punish wild-goose 
chases almost to the sources of the Red river 
after cotton, and we will not need cruel laws to 
enforce enrollment. We then may dispense 
with the bounty swindler, together with the cot- 
ton speculator, the gold robber, and the dealer 
in permits to trade with the rebels, all ai one 
fell swoop. Stop supplying the enemy with 
the sinews of war by the niillion, and then we 
may listen patiently to the President's call for 
three hundred thousand more loyal hearts, to 
be plu«ked from the bosom of society by the 
ruthless hand of an irresponsible provost mar- 
shal, through an order from the War Depart- 
ment, under the pretext of military necessity. 

Yet the gentleman from Ohio says that 
while he gives all these powers to the Provost 
Marshal General, and makes him superintend- 
ent of bounty swindling in this country, eo 
nomwe, he will not assail this organized sys- 
tem of crime, this outrage against humanity 1 
Yet day by day the majority in this House 
confiscate property; they trample upon the 
rights of citizens of both sectious of the coun- 
try, under the miserable plea of false philan- 
thropy. Such philanthropy is a falsehood on 
its f&CG 

Mr. SCHENCK. I move that debate be 
closed on this section. 

The motion was agreed to. 

Feb. 23, 1865. 
enrollment bill — again. 
The Clerk read, as follows : 

Sec. 11. A-nH be it fuHher enacted, Tbat in addition to 
the other lawful penalties of the crime of desertion from 
the military or uavul service, all persons who bave de- 
serted the military or naval service of the United States, 
who shall not return to said service or report themselves 
to a provost marshal within sixty days after the passage of 
this act, shall be deemed and taken to have voluntarily re- 
linquished and forfeited their rights of citizenship and their 
rights to become citizens ; and such deserters shall he for- 
ever incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under 
' the United States, or of exercising any of the rights of citi- 
zens thereof, and all persons who shall hereafter desert the 
military or naval service, and all persons who, be'ug duly 
enrolled, shall depart the jurisdicUon and go beyond the 
limits of the United States, with intent to avoid any draft 
into the military or naval service duly ordered, shall be lia- 
ble to the penaities of this section. And the President is 
hereby authorized and required forthwith, on the passage 
of this act, to issue his proclamation setting forth the pro- 
visions of this section. 

Mr. CHANLER. I move to amend the 
amendment by striking out the last word. My 
object in rising is to draw the attention of the 
House, for the fourth time under this bill, to the 
provision that all who shall not return to said 
service, or report themselves to a provost mar- 
shal within sixty days after the passage of this 
act, shall be deemed and taken to have volun- 
tarily relinquished and forfeited their rights of 
citizenship and their rights to become citizens ; 
and that such deserters shall be forever incapa- 
ble of holding any office of trust or profit un- 



der the United States, or of exercising any of 
the rights of citizens thereof. While I am wil- 
ling to unite with the chairman of the Military 
Committee in punishing deserters and in enrol- 
ling into the Army of the United States all 
competent and true men, I certainly deem it a 
legitimate question of debate — without render- 
ing ourselves liable to the charge of disloyalty 
— as to the propriety or impropriety of the 
provision of this section which makes it the 
law that by a non-observance of the obliga- 
tions to which I have referred, a citizen shall 
be held to forfeit all his rights under the law 
as a citizen. This bill and the debate under 
it have brought into issue the question of the 
loyalty of memb rs upon this floor. It has 
given rise to a serious question in the mind of 
every man who has taken his oath to maintain 
the Constitution, and all these questions centre 
upon the personal responsibility of each mem- 
ber ; and it does not become one on either 
side of the House to charge another with dere- 
liction of duty for conscientiously debating this 
bill. 

Now, sir, the Democratic party stands here 
to-day, Cassandra-like, raising its unavailing, 
sad voice against the introduction of this bill, 
containing within its fatal ribs the armed ene- 
mies of this Government, and its existence as 
a republic and a free Government upon this 
continent. 

Gentlemen upon the other side of the House 
have risen in their places and represented to 
the Committee on Military Afl'airs that this bill 
is dangerous to the safety of the State. We 
charge that with this section, and the lines just 
read prove it, this bill tends to violate the most 
sacred rights of every citizen throughout the 
country. 

But, sir, there are other points in this con- 
nection. What is the necessity for this strin- 
gent measure ? Until the chairman of the 
Committee on Military Affairs shall have ad- 
vanced to an argument more cogent than that 
of limiting debate to prove that this is a good 
enactment, he, of all men, has the least right to 
rise here and denounce those who debate the 
bill. Why has not the Secretary of War 
reported, as his duty wasjto^his House with 
regard to the condition ,of the armies in the 
field .? We are in the dark with regard to the 
whole matter of the cond^tct of this war. Why 
has not the committee oh the conduct of the 
war reported to the House, and laid before us 
the necessity for this law ? 
I Mr. SCHENCK. I think this matter is suf- 
I ficiently well understood, and I propose to 
j move to stop debate upon this section. Be- 
' fore I do so, however, I must insist upon set- 
' ting gentlemen right in regard to one partic- 
ular matter, for I do not mean to be misap- 
! prehended. I have made no general charge 
I of disloyalty that should call gentlemen to theit 
, feet. 



16 



013 703 693 9 



Mr. CHANLER. I move to add the follow- 
ing: 

That so much of all acts or parts of acts entitled acts to 
regulate and provide for enrolling and calling out the na- 
tional forces, and for other purposes, as authorize the Pres- 
ident of the United States to raise troops by conscription, 
be and hereby are repealed ; and that a': acts and parts ot 
acts inconsistent with this section be and the same are 
hereby repealed. 

Mr. Speaker, my object in oflFering this is to 
give an opportunity to those upon this floor 
who conscientiously and earnestly believe the 
whole system of a draft is contrary to the spirit 
of our institutions, and opposed to the welfare 
of our people, to place their vote upon record. 
I deem it a great privilege, with those who 
agree with me, to say to the people of the 
country that we adhere to the military system 
under which our liberties were won, and that 
we are unwilling to fall away from it and the 
precedents of the American Government, to 
establish the European system of raising troops 
and organizing armies in the midst of a civil 
war. Ourrecentvictories show that the armies 
of the rebellion, raised by conscription, are 
fleeing everywhere before our troops who were 
raised by volunteering. Why should we, imi- 
tating those who have rebelled against the Gov- 
ernment of the United States and inaugurated 
a system of conscription, adopt a similar law 
and impose it upon the loyal and devoted peo- 
ple of this country, who have responded to 
every call of the Government thus far, and ex- 
posed themselves and offered their fortunes for 
the protection of the Union ? 

If the signs of the times do not mislead us, 
the rebel hosts have been scattered, and the 
arch-conspirator who drew them after him in 
rebellion against the highest earthly power, 
the people of this country, is about being 
hurled from his bad eminence, overthrown by 
ovr veteran volunteers and their skillful com- 
manders. A conflict is raging among the 
stars which emblazon the southern half of our 
political horizon. That ruling spirit which 
they called from his high station here to hold 
them in harmony by his genius is stealing 
them one by one from their eccentric orbits to 
adorn the seat of his power as the centre of a 
new system. Whether by force supernal or 
infernal hejnagiachieve this mighty wrong we 
know not.. . The supreme power may be 
snatched from a-{)ortioi^''ofour people, and the 
sovereig'htjj of oi^r 'StdteV may glitter in the 
soathero cross abd:^e^e.tliroueof a despot. If 



so it is to be, ^ .„„ ,.„^j ^j^^ „f 

those who withdrew from our councils and our 
fellowship with proud looks and bloody hands, 
must cower before the artificial blaze of light 
which shall burst from that throne, and, bow- 
ing their prostrate forms before their tyrant, 
yearn for the calm and peaceful effulgence 
which once fell with universal blessing on the 
remotest section of this Union. 'With this 
warning sent to us from the very field of bat- 
tle, are we not unwise and heedless of the dan- 
gers actually surrounding the Constitution and 
the Union by continuing this conscription bill 
among our laws? Can we hope to escape the 
consequences inseparable from an undue mil- 
itary power in the hands of one man and his 
partisans ? Are we prepared to surrender the 
civil and religious rights of every citizen of this 
country to the almost Turkish justice of a mil- 
itary tribunal ? 

But suppose, as we have good reason to 
hope, that our rebellious brothers reunite with 
us again in national council for the restoration 
of the Union as it was. Suppose that they 
unite their force with our armies and bear 
their banner and their cross, token of suffer- 
ing and betrayal, against the new emperor 
whose audacious throne is already fixed upon 
a continent proclaimed free, and, under God, 
sacred to the sovereignty of the people alone. 
Against him, united in battle, we may hoj/e 
forever to sustain unbroken and untarnished 
the bright shield of our Union as it ever 
before gleamed in triumph against the despotic 
principles of feudalism and vassalage, until 
this whole boundless continent be ours. If this 
comes to pass, and our people arm themselves 
again for war, does any man dream that a 
conscription will be needed ? The past his- 
tory of this crisis has shown it to have been 
unnecessary ; at present it is useless and worse 
than unnecessary, it is corrupt. Let the en- 
rollment law be now repealed. 

I see no reason for debating this subject 
further. I do not wish to continue to draw upon 
the passions of the gentleman from Ohio, the 
chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, 
[Iilr. ScHENCK.] I submit the matter to the 
consideration of the House with a perfect 
reliance in the propriety of my action in 
voting against this bill, and am ready to abide 
by the judgment which may be passed upon 
its merits by the country. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




013 703 693 9 



